Seagate Advises Global Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs to Sharpen
Focus on Data Critical to the Success of Global Business Impact

Total Worldwide Data Will Swell to 163ZB by 2025 - 10 Times the
Amount Today; Majority Will Be Created and Managed by Enterprises

April 04, 2017 12:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In response to a new study forecasting a 10-fold rise in worldwide data
by 2025, global data and storage leader Seagate is advising business
leaders and entrepreneurs to amplify their focus on the mega trends
driving data growth over the next several years, and examine their
business' course for the future value of data from creation, collection,
utilization and management.

The IDC white paper, Data Age 2025, sponsored by Seagate,
predicts data creation will swell to a total of 163 zettabytes (ZB) by
2025; indicating that the decade centered around the conversion of
analog data to digital is being replaced by an era focused on the value
of data; creating, utilizing, and managing ‘life critical’ data
necessary for the smooth running of daily life for consumers,
governments and businesses alike. Consumers and businesses creating,
sharing and accessing data between any device and the cloud will
continue to grow well beyond previous expectations.

Further, whereas once consumers were the primary creators of the bulk of
the world’s data, Data Age 2025 predicts this will shift, with
enterprises creating 60 percent of the world’s data in 2025. Business
leaders will have the opportunity to embrace new and unique business
opportunities powered by this wealth of data and the insight it provides
but will also need to make strategic choices on data collection,
utilization and location.

Virtually every enterprise, the white paper indicates, is being affected
by the major data-driving trends. Notable drivers of the shift from
primarily consumer-led to enterprise-driven data include:

The evolution of data from business background to life-critical –
By 2025, nearly 20% of the data in the global datasphere will be
critical to our daily lives and nearly 10% of that will be
hypercritical.

Embedded systems and the Internet of Things (IoT) – By 2025, an
average connected person anywhere in the world will interact with
connected devices nearly 4,800 times per day – basically one
interaction every 18 seconds.

Machine learning changing the landscape – IDC estimates that
the amount of the global datasphere subject to data analysis will grow
by a factor of 50 to 5.2 ZB in 2025.

True mobile and real-time data – By 2025, more than a quarter
of data created will be real-time in nature, and IoT real-time data
will constitute over 95 percent of it.

Automation and machine-to-machine technologies shifting the bulk of
data creation away from traditional sources – While data creation
in the previous 10 years has been characterized primarily by an
increase in entertainment content, the coming decade will reflect the
shift to productivity-driven and embedded data, as well as
non-entertainment images and video such as surveillance and
advertising.

“While we can see from this new research that the era of Big Data is
upon us, the value of data is really not in the ‘known’, but in the
‘unknown’ where we are vastly underestimating the potentials today. What
is really exciting are the analytics, the new businesses, the new
thinking and new ecosystems from industries like robotics and
machine-to-machine learning, and their profound social and economic
impact on our society,” Seagate CEO Steve Luczo said. “The opportunity
for today’s enterprises and tomorrow’s entrepreneurs to capture the
value of data is tremendous, and our global business leaders will be
exploring these opportunities for decades to come.”

IDC SVP Dave Reinsel said: “From autonomous cars to intelligent personal
assistants, data is the lifeblood of a rapidly growing digital existence
– opening up opportunities previously unimagined by businesses.
Technology innovation will be vitally important to evaluate and fully
activate the intricacies of what’s contained within this large volume of
data – and storage in particular will continue to grow in importance, as
it provides the foundation from which so many of these emerging
technologies will be served.”

For more information on the IDC White Paper, Data Age 2025, including
related infographics, visit www.DataAge2025.com